At
0815 on Monday August 6, 1945 “Little Boy”, containing 130 pounds of Uranium
235, killed outright 70,000 Japanese civilians. The shadows of many of them,
eerily burned into the concrete as their bodies were instantaneously vaporized
can be seen today at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. The 13 kiloton weapon, only.00065 as powerful as today’s20 megaton nightmares,
killed 90% of all the physicians, 93% of all the nurses. No help would be
forthcoming for the 90,000 dying of the vomiting, the wasting away of the then
unknown radiation sickness. Much of the U.S. public in 1945, thought of Japanese
as “monkeys”, a “mass of vermin”, 13% thought all Japanese should be
‘exterminated”. ( Martel, WWII Reader)

Sonic
booms often shook my home in the late 1950s. We learned in school to crawl under
our desks, to shield our eyes from the flash that would blind us forever. They
showed us Civil Defense films of ”The Bomb” and it’s power, like Hell on
earth. I knew that desk wasn’tgoing to protect nada. How
stupidand undeserving of trust were these adults teaching me
that it would? The Cleveland TV news showed the range of those Cuban missiles,
drawn with circumferential arcs north of Lake Erie whilst speaking of the steel,
auto, tank building targets. I lived inside of those arcs October of 1962. President
John Kennedy restrained his military men, men who could only speak of first
strike, invasion, and “acceptable casualties”. What if the swaggering ,
“Bring it on!”( GWB June 2003) flight suit wearing, tragicschoolyard
bully that was George W. Bush had his chance to outshine his father then?

The
recent Wikileak tapes and documents of U.S. troops killing civilians by the
hundreds only confirms what war has always been. What is wrong with Obama? Is it
so important to him to be a centrist, to try and listen to his Republican
opposition that he fails to do the right thing, the humane thing and end these
occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan? I called his office, shortly after his
inauguration, told his staff that like another Democratic President, Lyndon
Baines Johnson, who saw his dreams of the a justAmerican
“Great Society” destroyed by Vietnam, so would Afghanistan drain the lives,
finances and dreams of Obama’s administration. I had canvassed door to door
for Obama, I urged his staff tell Obama to do what he knew was right and end
these inheritedmilitary misadventures.

The
U.S. spends more on the military than all the rest of the world combined. Well
over 50% of our discretionary spending goes to bombs, missiles and bullets. Our
health care system is ranked far below that of many other nations, nations where
no one dies because they can’t see a doctor. 45,000 die yearly in the U.S. for
lack of health insurance. In many nations students are a national treasure,
treated like a valuable resource to be developed.They attend
college free, medical students graduate without debt. Freed of debt, such
medical graduates become needed primary care Docs. U.S. Docs , incurringcrushing debt , become overpriced specialists. The total costs of the
Iraq and Afghanistan occupations, by the time the vets are cared for, and our
debt paid to China, with interest- will be over$6-8 trillion
dollars. My grandchildren attend an elementary school over a
hundred years old. Are we insane?

This
August 6th, the 65th anniversary of Hiroshima, the
Circleville Quakers and Veterans for Peace will continue our first Friday of
every month “Honk for Peace and Justice” event, 4:30 p.m. at the Pickaway
County Courthouse, South Court Street. Prophet Micah knew that
the way to peace is through justice, it is only when everyone is secure , when
“ each man will sit under his vine and fig tree, with no one to trouble him”
will they “ hammer their swords into ploughshares.” ( excerpts of Micah
4:3-4 New Jerusalem translation). Having a vine and fig tree means no man dies
from lack of health care in the richest nation in the world, that every parent
knows his child will be educated, knows that unregulated Wall Street financiers
will not gamble away the economy. It means no mother’s
child will die or kill another’s child in Iraq or Afghanistan because he was
poor with so few opportunities that joining the military or selling crack seemed
like the only option. All persons, all faiths, even the so-called “pariahs”
among us will have an honored seat at the banquet. This is the Kingdom of God
Jesus asked us to work for.

Working
for Peace is joyous! Join us at the Pickaway County Courthouse on the first
Friday of every month - 4 p.m. 1960’s and Motown tunes by boombox free
to all participants!